I promised this one - or rather, these ones - a long time ago, but kept postponing. The bonus sections, featuring film capsules, podcast recommendations, political reflections, and listener feedback, were originally planned for the summer but work on Journey Through Twin Peaks videos pushed them back to February (same with my "Twin Peaks Cinema" coverage of the dark small town melodrama Kings Row, starring Ronald Reagan, which I wanted to discuss in conjunction with a documentary on the fortieth president). Then, for complicated reasons, I found myself working on several projects simultaneously while also traveling for the first time since the pandemic began (as well as getting sucked into the drama surrounding the stimulus vote in Congress) - so the "February" podcasts ended up getting published in March.
Hopefully, the material was worth the wait. Kings Row was a particularly fascinating work to dig into between its social drama, psychological motifs, and dark family dynamics; it makes an interesting comparison point not just to Peaks but to other films discussed as "Twin Peaks Cinema" like Peyton Place and Our Town. Only after recording was I reminded that the same director, Sam Wood, helmed both Our Town and Kings Row - so perhaps I'll have more to say on those films from that angle in the future. At one point, I also hoped to offer full "film in focus" reviews on the 2019 horror film Us, Jordan Peele's clever, twisty follow-up to Get Out (which I reviewed a couple years ago), and Brideshead Revisited, the definitive arthouse-TV literary adaptation. Although I ended up shaving them down to extended capsules, I will definitely be revisiting both titles in other mediums.
Elsewhere, listener feedback ranged across numerous aspects of Twin Peaks (from the zeitgeist of its different eras to the collaboration between Lynch and Frost to its impact on multiple video games). Podcast recommendations on historical, cinematic, and political subjects were divided into four mini-episodes with all the accompanying links in the show notes. And my political reflections ended up standing on their own as a ninety-minute episode...unsurprisingly, given that 2020 was arguably the most historically significant year in America since 1968 even if just for the pandemic (which takes up less than ten minutes, although it hovers in the background of everything else).
That's just a small sample of what's in these podcasts; I even had to excise and save more than half the film capsules and the Journey Through Twin Peaks feedback for upcoming episodes. I did get up my belated Lost in Twin Peaks coverage of the comeback (?) episode where the late second season really begins, which was also meant to publish in February. My "March" rewards will be a little late too, but only by days in this case. So stay tuned. Meanwhile, here are links to all the podcasts, followed by a detailed rundown of the content for each one....
Podcast Line-Ups for...
